Defense “Help” Wanted
A read-my-lips moment for Bush II?

Mr. Gaffney is president of the Center for Security Policy
February 8, 2001 11:30 a.m.

n the course of the presidential campaign, candidates George W. Bush and Richard Cheney, their surrogates, and supporters made much of the GOP's commitment to "rebuilding the military." While they only pledged to spend an additional $45 billion more over the next ten years than the Clinton-Gore team envisioned (about $55 billion less than the Democratic ticket promised to add), the popular perception that the Republicans were more serious about redressing the cumulative effect of years of the incumbents' malign neglect of our armed forces could, arguably, have been determinative of the outcome in this close election.

For this reason, it came as a powerful body-blow to the armed forces and those who prize their service when the new Bush-Cheney administration began signaling this week that it would not increase the Clinton-Gore defense budget this year. Not by the promised $4.5 billion, not in a supplemental request, nada.

Were that position to stand, it would have a devastating effect on the military and the new administration. For one thing, it would ensure that there would be no immediate relief in the kinds of shortfalls that have produced headlines for months. These have included horror stories about troops that are going untrained; aircraft, ships, and other equipment that are unable to perform their peacetime missions, let alone combat operations, due to lack of spare parts and fuel; and acute shortages in critical materiel — from cruise missiles to bullets.

In an important op-ed article published in the Washington Post on December 20, two former secretaries of defense — James Schlesinger and Harold Brown — offered a sobering, bipartisan assessment of the magnitude of these problems:

"…A few weeks ago the Congressional Budget Office released a study concluding that we need to spend at least $50 billion more each year just to keep our armed forces at the present level of combat capability. According to CBO, $75 billion or more is needed to perform the sort of wholesale recapitalization of the U.S. military that has been made necessary by a decade of underfunding.

"A thorough and independent assessment by Daniel Goure and Jeffrey Ranney indicates that it would cost roughly $100 billion more a year to ensure that the armed forces have the kind and quantity of equipment, realistic training and quality-of-life conditions that the Clinton administration has said will be required in the years ahead. The bulk of this amount (roughly 80 percent) would go toward replacement of obsolescent aircraft, ships and tanks."

The effect of a Bush-Cheney failure to provide any additional financial resources to the Pentagon — to say nothing of the large sums truly required — would be fully to implicate the new team in its predecessor's appalling treatment of the U.S. military, and dangerously to perpetuate the armed services' present inadequate ability to deter and, if necessary to fight, the nation's wars.

In a way, even worse, a decision by President Bush to deny the Pentagon additional resources would devastate those in uniform and out who believed it when they were memorably told by Dick Cheney last fall that "Help is on the way." During the campaign Mr. Bush, et al. often spoke about the need to revitalize the morale and esprit de corps of the U.S. military. Few things would more powerfully reinforce the already prevalent sense in the armed forces that their service and sacrifice is cynically recognized by both political parties only when elections roll around — and systematically ignored the rest of the time. Chronic efforts to prevent the military's votes from counting has further exacerbated the sense of alienation from civilian authorities.

Should these perceptions be validated and take hold, the consequences could be quite serious. Not only would the United States be less ready than it must be to prevent and prevail in the conflicts to come. The Republicans would also making a grave political error insofar as they are seen to be stiff-arming a core constituency — the Reagan defense coalition, for want of a better term. It behooves them to reconstitute and energize this coalition if they have any hope of holding onto the Congress in 2002 and the White House two years later.

By some estimates, the potential membership of such a coalition is vast — perhaps as many as 20 million Americans. These include: active duty personnel and their counterparts in the reserves and National Guard; veterans; dependents; base communities; and past and present defense contractors and their union and non-union employees. Then there are those untold additional millions of patriotic citizens who may not have any more direct connection to the military than a deep sense of gratitude for what servicemen and women do for us all.

Fortunately, the Bush-Cheney administration has just put out the word that it has not ruled out increasing the defense budget this year, after all. It says it is simply determined to complete a "strategic review" of the condition of the military it inherited and the kinds of changes it requires before making judgments about the size and purposes for which any defense supplemental might be sought. Sounds reasonable and certainly orderly. The only question is: Will the problems everybody knows exist right now be addressed promptly? If the review is done with dispatch and additional resources sought quickly, the obvious shortfalls, and the dispiriting effect of allowing them to be perpetuated for even one day more, should be manageable. If not, not.

Next week is National Security Week on President Bush's calendar. It will afford him ample opportunity to showcase where he really stands on defense — and whether the promised and urgently needed "help" has actually arrived.